De Menezes inquiry: officer admits to altering his notes

by Simon Basketter

Published Tue 14 Oct 2008

Issue No. 2123

A senior police officer has admitted that he tampered with his notes about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian man shot seven times in the head by the police at Stockwell tube station in July 2005.

The Special Branch officer in question was giving evidence to the ongoing inquest into Jean Charles’s death. He is known only as “Owen” and gave evidence from behind a screen.

Owen admitted that he had deleted a line in his notes about Cressida Dick, the police officer in charge of the operation. The deleted line stated that Dick had said Menezes “can run on to tube as not carrying anything”.

Owen added that he had altered his notes on 7 October this year. That was the day Cressida Dick gave evidence to the inquest, where she stated that she believed Jean Charles posed a “great threat”.

In other evidence, a senior surveillance officer named only as “Pat” denied that he had told police chiefs that Jean Charles was a suspect. Cressida Dick had claimed in her evidence that Pat had said, “They think it’s him.”

Owen’s notes are not the only example of the police altering evidence in this case. A police surveillance log was altered on the day that Jean Charles was gunned down.

The original entry read, “A split second view of his face. I believe it was [the suspect].” This was changed to “A split second view of his face AND I believe it was NOT [the suspect].”

Giovani da Silva, Jean Charles’s brother, said, “This latest cover-up only increases suspicion about what officers were doing that day and whether they are telling the truth.”

The inquest continues.

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